In the Red
by inkstainedfingers97
Summary: Obviously, he was lying when he said it. Of course, she'd been lying, too, when she'd pretended to believe him. It was just that he was so much better at it than she was.


Rating: Teen

Spoilers: Through 4x24

A/N: So I started writing an absolute epic starring our two favorite characters which has pretty much taken over my life. I'm really excited about it and have been pretty much consumed by it, but since it will probably be several months before I'm even close to finishing it, I figured I'd dust this off to tide you all over in the meantime so you don't forget about me. :) This is a one shot that picks up immediately after 4x24.

xxx

Obviously, he was lying when he said it.

_"What did I say?"_ Blank expression, eyes unblinking. What a load of hooey.

Like the man who bragged his memory palace was a mighty fortress from which no detail ever escaped could forget a little thing like telling a woman he'd worked with for the better part of ten years that he loved her. Like _anyone_ could forget telling a person he loved her after he hadn't seen her for six months and then asked her if he could fake shoot her to fool a serial killer.

Of course, she'd been lying, too, when she'd pretended to believe him. It was just that he was so much better at it than she was.

Lisbon flipped over onto her back and stared at her bedroom ceiling. What was with the denial, anyway? Obviously they both remembered the moment- it was burned into her brain, at least.

Well, that part wasn't so hard to figure out, actually. He didn't want to admit what he said, and he was banking on her being too cowardly to call him on his ridiculous lie. She couldn't decide who she was madder at: him, for pretending nothing was going on, when he *knew* how hard it must have been for her to ask him that; or herself, for being too cowardly to force the issue.

But why the hug, and the good luck, and the 'love you' in the first place? It didn't even make sense. It wasn't part of the plan, it did nothing for the long con. And no one else even heard it. It was just them.

Maybe he meant it. It was just the two of them. No reason to lie. And he'd said it. Just like that.

So he might love her. But who the hell knew what that meant? Was this a friendly, I love you as the person who's always stood by me and by the way thanks for helping me on this crazy scheme kind of love you? Or something more? Either way, it still didn't explain why he even said it in the first place.

He'd been flirting with her while he was pretending to carry her severed head to Red John in a cardboard box. "Must have been awhile since you rode on the handlebars of a man's bike." Like he thought it was the funniest thing in the world that he was pretending to carry her head around in a bike basket to deliver to his archnemesis.

She'd played it off, of course, like he was just being his usual pain in the ass self, but she'd been hyper aware of Van Pelt sitting next to her, conscious of the entire team hearing Jane tease her like they were lovers. "Kind of romantic, don't you think?" he'd said. Why on earth would he say that, after the whole absurd "What did I say?" nonsense he'd pulled on her not an hour beforehand. In front of the whole team, no less.

Forgot, indeed.

She didn't know why she was obsessing about this. The logical conclusion was that he was trying to drive her insane, with his words that failed to match his actions, his actions that contradicted his words, and his damn, stupid denials and pretend 'I love you' amnesia. Yes, obviously he was just trying to shred what little was left of her sanity into tiny, irreparable pieces. She should just accept that and move on.

Here was the worst part, though. She felt pissed as hell, betrayed, hurt, and beyond confused, but she was still so pleased to see him that those feelings were eclipsed by her happiness that he was all right. She could feel herself forgiving him out of sheer relief. God, she was such a sucker.

And he'd held her hand. They'd had a brief, perfect moment of calm on the side of that dusty road when she'd actually let herself hope that everything might be all right, after all, that nothing mattered except the fact that they were both still breathing and that he had her hand clasped in his.

And *then,* little miss minion had dropped the bombshell that Jane had slept with her. Like she knew Lisbon would be jealous. And dammit, she was right. Lisbon was jealous. Maybe she wouldn't have been, if it hadn't been for the hand holding and everything—okay, she might have been, but she could have lived with it—but to find that out after everything else that had happened was too much. She didn't even have the heart to ask Jane if he'd known he was sleeping with one of Red John's helpers at the time. Frankly, she was afraid to find out. She didn't know which would be worse, that he had or that he hadn't.

Then there was this: why had Red John wanted *her* head on a platter, so to speak? Or in a cardboard box, for that matter. It seemed significant, but they hadn't discussed it. Everyone had accepted it as natural that Red John wanted her dead, and that he wanted Jane to bring him her body. She was the team leader, so perhaps there was some credence to the argument that she was being targeted because she was part of the investigation, but somehow, that didn't ring quite true. Yet no one had questioned that Red John would ask Jane to bring him her dead body as proof of his loyalty.

But really, given all that had happened, the fact that a notorious serial killer wanted her dead barely registered as a mildly interesting side note. She was too consumed with thoughts of Jane.

Six months of worry, heartache, and loneliness and then suddenly he's back, telling her he loves her (maybe), holding her hand, and pretending to kill her.

Really, it was too much to process. It was like they'd gone from zero to mach .80 in nothing flat. She needed time to think about things, figure out what the hell she was feeling before trying to take further action.

Of course, it would be better if she could process things at a time other than three o clock in the morning while staring at her bedroom ceiling.

She stared at the ceiling for a few minutes longer, her insides churning with anger and hurt and doubt.

Well, to hell with this. She'd lost enough sleep over Patrick Jane over the past six months. And now she knew something very important which she hadn't known before.

She knew where he was.

xxx

Jane opened the door after only ten seconds of her banging on it in her best 'CBI, open up' door pounding manner. He was in the same hotel that he used to stay at, before he'd left for Vegas. He was even in the same damn room. The one she'd offered to come to, after he had gone off the rails at Wainwright that day, to help him work through what had just happened. The one she had found cold and empty later that evening when she'd gone to find him.

That cold emptiness had seeped into her bones from that room and taken up permanent residence in her chest during his absence. And now he was back here, like nothing had changed, like the thought of this empty room hadn't been poisoning her slowly from the inside for the past six months. God, he was infuriating. What the hell was wrong with him? Why couldn't he just get an apartment like a normal person?

He looked exhausted, but she knew he hadn't been sleeping any more than she had. "Hello, Lisbon," he greeted her, looking utterly unsurprised to see her.

Bastard.

She didn't wait to be invited in. She marched past him, her entire body radiating with tension, and rounded on him before he even got the door closed. "What the hell is the matter with you?" she demanded.

He blinked, and shut the door the rest of the way. "Care to be more specific?" he said lightly.

Let me count the ways, Lisbon thought. She opened her mouth, uncertain which charge to level at him first.

"Why did you tell me you loved me?" she heard herself say. "And then shoot me!"

Damn. She hadn't meant to lead with that.

"I didn't really shoot you," he reminded her. "I fake shot you. And I did tell you I was going to. You agreed to it, remember?"

"Oh, now I'm the one with the bad memory?" she snarled. "You jerk. I thought you were too 'hyped up' to remember the details."

"Of course I was hyped up! If it the plan went wrong, everything would have been ruined." He brushed past her and ran his hand through his hair, looking agitated. "Everything I'd done over the past six months would have been for nothing. And if I couldn't convince Red John that I killed you, then he might well have decided to do the job himself."

She turned to face him, now standing by the bed. "And you chose that moment to confess your 'love' for me?" she said sarcastically, using air quotes around the word 'love.'

"I didn't mean to say it! Do you think that's how I would have planned to say it? While looking at you from the wrong end of a loaded gun?"

"Then why the hell did you say it at all?" Lisbon demanded.

"I don't know!" he snapped. "I was scared stiff. What if we'd been caught? What if Red John anticipated our plan and was planning to take you from me the minute I got you out of the building? He asked for your dead body, Lisbon! How the hell was I supposed to know that he wasn't going to get tired of waiting for me to bring you to him and decided to come after you himself?"

"Is that what the hug and the 'good luck?' was for?" she said caustically. "Best of luck on your own, Lisbon, if my whole miserable, *stupid* plan fails and you end up in the hands of a serial killer as a result of it?"

He ran his hand through his hair. "I… yes. I suppose so."

"Gee, thanks, Jane. A lot of good your luck would do me if it ever came to that."

He smiled sadly. "Believe me, I know how worthless my luck is, when it comes to Red John. I guess I just wanted you to have anything I could give you, if the worst happened, no matter how useless it may have seemed to you."

"Then why did you take it back?" she asked, goaded beyond endurance. If the worst happened, she might have been able to use that brief declaration of love, to shore up her courage, to hold as a warm, bright talisman next to her heart, if she'd had any damn clue what he meant by it. But he'd taken that away from her, too.

He blinked. "Take it back?"

"Oh, having memory problems again, are we? In the warehouse, you idiot!"

"I didn't take it back," he argued.

"You claimed you couldn't remember, Mr. Memory Palace. It amounts to the same thing."

"I didn't take it back," he said stubbornly.

She seriously considered hitting him. "Fine," she said, switching tactics since the current one wasn't getting her anywhere. "What about Lorelei?"

He stared at her. "What about her?"

"How could you let her blindside me in the interrogation like that?"

A flash of guilt passed over his face. "I didn't mean for you to find out like that."

She folded her arms over her chest and looked at him skeptically. "So you were planning to tell me?"

"Yes… sort of."

"What kind of answer is that?"

"Well, how was I supposed to bring that up in conversation, Lisbon? 'I'm sorry I bailed on you, I missed you every day that I was gone, and by the way, I slept with Red John's whore while I was in Vegas?'"

She flinched. "It would have been better than letting me walk in there blind. At least I would have known you shouldn't have been in the interrogation in the first place."

He looked at her incredulously. "Why the hell not?"

"Because it isn't a good idea for someone to be investigating someone they're personally involved with!"

He waved his hand dismissively. "I'm not personally involved with her."

"Of course you are," she said, exasperated. "You kissed her in the interrogation room, for God's sake!"

"On the top of the head," he protested. "To mess with her. To get under her skin."

"To mess with her?" she echoed. "Do you seriously hear what you are saying? You slept with her, Jane. Obviously, you have feelings for her."

"I have no feelings for her," he said sharply. "She's a means to an end. She knows Red John. She can give me information that will lead me to him."

"Did you know she was working for Red John when you slept with her?" Lisbon asked skeptically.

He looked at her, surprised. "Of course."

Her face wrinkled up in an expression of disgust before she could stop herself. He willingly slept with a woman he knew to be in Red John's service? Ew. "You don't get how messed up that is?" She ignored the tiny part of herself that was relieved that he hadn't fallen into bed with Lorelei because he actually cared about her. God, she was pathetic.

"Of course it's messed up. The whole thing is messed up. It was the only thing I could think of to finally end this whole thing."

"How's that working for you?" she asked snidely.

"Not great," he admitted.

"So what's your next move? Engineer a moment alone with her in the supply closet for a quickie in the hopes that she'll give you more information about Red John?"

"If I thought that would get me closer to my goal, I would consider it," he said coldly. "But at this point it doesn't seem like the most efficient way of getting what I want."

Kicking him, she decided, would be better than punching him in the face. He'd be less likely to expect it. "Well, at least now you're being honest, for once in your life. It's all about what you want. How your actions affect the people around you has no bearing on your decisions."

"Look, I know I hurt you when I left—"

Such a gross understatement was not to be borne. Hurt her. Like what he'd done was the emotional equivalent of giving her a paper cut, instead of leaving her behind with a hollow space in her ribcage where her heart was supposed to be. "That's not what this is about."

He looked at her in that knowing way of his which she found so infuriating. "Isn't it?"

"No," she said. "It's about… everything."

"What do you want, Lisbon?" he said calmly.

"I want you to stop lying to me!"

"No, I mean, why did you come here to yell at me in the middle of the night?"

"Is that what I've done?" she said mockingly. "That's funny, I can't *remember.*"

"Why are you here?" he repeated.

"I want answers." She took a deep breath. "After everything you've put me through, I deserve them."

He gave her a long, considering look. "All right then," he said slowly. "Fire away."

She didn't wait for him to change his mind. "Why didn't you trust me? Why did you keep me in the dark?"

"I did trust you."

She snorted in disbelief.

"It's true. I trust you more than anyone else in the world. But the con wouldn't have worked if you'd known the truth."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because you're much too impatient for a con like that and you're a terrible liar. You would have come marching over to Vegas and dragged me back to Sacramento by the hair after a month was up, if I'd told you the truth. I couldn't let anyone suspect I was in contact with you, or the game would be up."

"Why would that even matter?" Lisbon demanded. "What would have been so terrible for your stupid plan about you taking the time to let me know you were still breathing?"

"Because, Lisbon," he said patiently. "You represent all that is good in my life. You're my connection to light and hope. As long as you were in my life, Red John would never believe that I'd given up."

She didn't like the implications of what he was saying. "I'm not a saint, Jane, despite that stupid nickname. I'm not some kind of… avenging angel."

He gave her an odd smile. "Aren't you?"

"No. I'm just a woman with a badge and a gun who is trying to help you catch a killer."

"Obviously, that's not all you are."

"What am I, then?" she challenged him. "Besides a convenient dupe for your clever schemes?"

"You're—" he stopped, apparently struggling for the correct words. He reached out and took her hand. "Strong. Beautiful. And the person I care most about in the world."

She yanked her hand back. She couldn't bear to have him touch her, call her beautiful, if this was another trick. Or if he was going to take it back again. "You're so full of shit, Jane. Sell that bill of goods somewhere else, because I'm not buying it."

"Why would I lie about something like that?" he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Her heart was beating too fast. "You're just doing what you always do, making up excuses and telling me what you think I want to hear after the fact when things don't go the way you've planned."

"No, I'm not," he said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "I said it because it's true."

She shook him off. "Yeah, right." If he cared so damn much, he wouldn't have left.

He looked at her. "Why don't you believe me?"

"Because you're a liar."

"You can trust me, Lisbon. I'm telling the truth."

"You broke my trust, Jane," she said harshly. She took a deep breath. "I'm not sure I can believe a word you say ever again."

"You trusted me enough to go along with my plan to catch Red John when I came back from Vegas," he pointed out.

That was different. He was asking her to trust him with her heart, this time, not just her life. "And look how that turned out."

"I know I don't deserve your help, Lisbon. But I do appreciate it. More than you know. And I trust you. I hope I can earn your trust again, in turn."

"I wouldn't hold my breath, if I were you," she muttered.

He looked at her intently. "What's your next question?"

She opened her mouth to speak, the question she most wanted to be answered on the tip of her tongue, but her courage failed her and she almost choked on the words.

He raised his eyebrows. "Cat got your tongue?"

She couldn't believe he was making fun of her at a time like this. Well, that answered that question. Equal parts furious and devastated, the need to get away from him was suddenly overwhelming. "This was a mistake. I shouldn't have come here." She turned blindly to the door and fumbled for the handle, but he took two long strides and caught her by the arm before she could make her escape.

The air between them changed. "Wait," he said, his voice low in her ear. His body was so close behind hers that she could feel the warmth of his body emanating from him. She froze, and they stood there for a moment, both facing the door, his body nearly flush against hers. "I have something to say to you before you go."

She suppressed a shudder at the feeling of his breath warm against her ear as he spoke. She turned to face him, needing to put some small amount of distance between them, and above all, to do anything she could to make sure she couldn't feel his nearness with every cell in her body. "What is it?"

He let go of her arm and stared into her eyes. "Yes," he said softly, as though in answer to a question she had posed.

Great. Now he was making even less sense than usual. "Excuse me?"

"Yes is the answer to the question you mean to ask, Lisbon," he said gently. "Yes, I meant it. I do love you. In fact, I am in love with you."

The bottom dropped out of her stomach. That couldn't be true. It just… couldn't be. "No," she whispered.

"I am," he said firmly. "What's more, you're in love with me, too."

"No, I'm not," she denied reflexively. This was happening too fast—she couldn't get her bearings. She retreated into the comfortable territory of denial while her brain struggled to process what he was saying.

"Of course you are. If you weren't, you wouldn't have come over here in the middle of the night to yell at me. The fact that you couldn't sleep because you were thinking about why I told you I loved you proves that the answer to that question was important to you. And the only reason that would be important to you would be if you were in love with me yourself. Ergo, you must be in love with me."

"That's the dumbest reasoning I've ever heard," she blustered, determined to defend herself. Even if his stupid logic was right.

He grinned. "But it's true, isn't it?"

She scowled. "No."

He inched closer to her. "Oh, come on, Lisbon, I told you I'm in love with you. What more do you want?"

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. He loved her. Was in love with her. At least, he said he was. The words were simple—why could she still not grasp what he meant?

"You asked why I said it," he said softly. "Why I told you I loved you before I shot you. I was hyped up, for all the reasons I said before, but the truth is, part of the reason I was hyped up was because I was seeing you for the first time in six months."

She regained her voice. Somehow it was much easier to speak when she was bringing attention to mistakes in his logic. "You saw me in the church," she pointed out.

"It wasn't the same."

"Why not?"

He considered this. "I'm not sure. I think it was because I couldn't see your eyes."

He still wasn't making sense. "My eyes?"

"Yes. When we were in the church, I was sitting behind you, and the church pew was between us. You didn't turn all the way around to look at me. But when I was in your office, I could see your eyes, and there was nothing between us. All of a sudden, I needed to touch you. And after I did, the words just kind of spilled out on their own."

Her heart hammered against her chest. "If what you said was true, why the hell did you pretend to forget saying it in the warehouse?"

"I panicked," he said simply. "I was scared to death about what might happen with Red John when we went out to that desert together. I blew you off because I couldn't handle thinking about anything else at that moment besides catching Red John and ending the whole damn thing without getting any of us killed." He watched her closely. "Now, is there anything else we need to cover before you'll believe me?"

She looked up at him, her green eyes full of hurt and love and anger. "You left."

He looked down. "I know. I am sorry, you know."

"You let me worry myself sick for months, when you could have put my mind at ease with the push of a button."

"I'm sorry," he said again, meeting her eyes this time, but added nothing further.

She sighed. "You suck at apologies, Jane."

He frowned, slightly affronted. "What do you mean? I'm being sincere."

She didn't know how to tell him what she meant. That she needed him to give her more, explain what he was thinking, outline his thoughts and feelings in detail before she would have any chance of comprehending his words in the way he intended her to. Instead, she said, "You've lied to me so many times, it's getting pretty hard to tell the difference."

He fixed his blue-green eyes on hers. "I never apologize unless I mean it, Lisbon."

Belatedly, she realized this was true. She always tried to bully him into apologizing to the many, many people he offended in the course of the investigations, and nine times out of ten he would flatly refuse. Only when she convinced him he'd actually done something wrong would he back down and say the dreaded words 'I'm sorry.' Usually, the only person he would voluntarily apologize to was her. Dammit, she was starting to believe him. "Whatever."

His voice was low. "I missed you, you know."

Did you stop sleeping? Stop eating? she wanted to ask. Did you lay awake wondering if you would ever see me again? If you would ever find anyone you could care about as much as me?

He must have read some of this on her face, because he grimaced as though he was in pain and quickly started in again. "I did have doubts, you know. About whether what I was doing was the right thing. I worried whether the plan would work or not."

Which it hadn't, she thought. She said nothing, however.

"There were times when I was convinced it would be better to give it up," he continued. "I thought about coming back to the CBI, to you. I would daydream about how I would surprise you when I came back. I knew you'd be mad, of course, though I admit that when I was really feeling low I occasionally entertained the fantasy that you would be so glad to see me you would just throw yourself into my arms. Most of the time, though, I kept a firm enough grip on reality to know that would never happen, so I imagined a thousand different scenarios about how I would get you to forgive me."

She wondered if any of them had involved scaring her half to death in a church and then pretending to shoot her.

He went on. "I used to lay awake nights and think about your face. Your eyes, your mouth, your skin. I was terrified of forgetting even the tiniest detail. I had a panic attack one night at three in the morning because I was afraid I was forgetting the way your freckles were scattered across your face. I had to go downtown to one of those all night business centers and find a picture of you from a newspaper clipping that I could print out and take with me before I could calm down."

Lisbon felt cheered by this. If he was telling the truth, this painted a picture sufficiently pathetic to reassure her that she wasn't completely alone in this whole thing. She wasn't immune to the implied flattery, either, especially from a man as beautiful as Jane. But seriously, her *freckles*?

"I started playing a game to amuse myself while I was killing time in Vegas," he told her. "When I went to the store, I would go through the aisles and guess which items you would choose. And then, which items you secretly would have liked to buy, but you were too practical to purchase for yourself. I thought about what you would do if I bought them for you. If you would accept them, or throw them back in my face. I told myself I would be better to you, when I came back. That I would spoil you with those things you'd never buy for yourself." He looked at her hopefully. "Will you let me do that for you, now that I'm back?"

"Jane, I don't want you to buy me things," she said, exasperated. She wasn't interested in material objects that Jane acquired for her out of some misplaced sense of guilt.

He looked up at her. "What do you want, then?"

The truth tasted bitter on the back of her tongue. "I just want you here." She swallowed. "With me."

He drew her into his arms. "I'll be here," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "I'll never leave you again, Lisbon. I promise. Doing it once was bad enough. I have no desire to repeat the experience. You're stuck with me."

She clutched the back of his shirt, pulling him closer to her. "You really meant it? What you said before you shot me?"

He laid his cheek against the top of her head. "Of course I meant it. Why else would I have said it?"

She hadn't been able to come up with a reasonable explanation for that, actually. "I don't know."

"I meant it, Lisbon," he said softly. "I love you."

She closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel the words for the first time. He loved her. He was going to stay. She was trembling like a leaf, but she was sure of her words now. She pulled back and met his gaze. "I believe you."

"Great," he said, a smile in his voice. "Now, do you love me, too?"

She smiled somewhat shakily. "Of course I love you, you idiot. Why else would I be here?"

He engulfed her in a bear hug which threatened to crack her ribs. She leaned against him, burying her face in his shoulder and squeezing her eyes shut against the tears she could feel building behind her eyes.

To her horror, the tears started to spill over, and before she knew it, she was crying in earnest, her body shaking with sobs that had been suppressed for far too long. Jane didn't say anything, but made soft, soothing noises and stroked her hair like she was a child. They stood there for what felt like ages. He let her cry herself out, murmuring unintelligible words of comfort while he held her close and rubbed gentle circles on her back.

"I'm sorry," she hiccupped against him after she had managed to regain some semblance of control over herself again. "I don't know what's gotten into me. I hardly ever cry." She hadn't allowed herself to succumb to tears once while he was gone. Now that she thought about it, the last time she could remember even being close to tears was when that psychotic shrink had poisoned her and tried to convince her she had murdered someone. Since then, the man she loved had disappeared off the face of the planet for six months, slept with another woman, and asked her if he could shoot her. Plus, a serial killer had asked for her head in a box.

Perhaps she was due.

He kissed the top of her head. "Don't apologize to me, Lisbon. Not when I'm the one who has caused you all this pain."

She took a deep breath and raised her tear-stained face to his. He was so beautiful. And she loved him. It felt good to finally admit that particular truth.

He smiled down at her. "Feel better?"

"Yeah," she admitted.

He pulled her close to him again. "Good."

She rested her cheek against his shirt front for a moment. "Jane?" she said finally.

He held fast to her. "Yes?"

"I think I need to blow my nose."

He chuckled. "I suppose I can let you go for that." He kissed each of her eyelids in turn and released her.

She went into the bathroom and found some tissue. She blew her nose noisily and then washed her face for good measure; the cool water refreshed her hot cheeks and soothed her gritty eyes. She drank a glass of water and then returned to the bedroom.

Jane was standing there, the right side of his shirt soaked with salty stains all over the shoulder.

She took in the evidence of her meltdown, feeling slightly embarrassed. She felt headachy and exhausted from the crying, and utterly drained from all that had come before. She walked into the middle of the room and hesitated by the foot of the bed. Unaccustomed to such weighty emotional interactions, she wasn't sure what to do next. What she really wanted to do was crawl into the bed and sleep for about a week, but she wasn't completely sure how he would receive such a suggestion. It wasn't like this in the movies. You never had doubts once the final declarations had been made. "Now what?"

"We could kiss," Jane suggested. "I believe that is the traditional activity after exchanging mutual declarations of love."

She tried to wrap her head around the idea of kissing Jane, now, just like that, after nine years of not kissing him. "You think we should kiss?"

"Absolutely." He grinned and stepped towards her. "Come on. You know you want to."

She huffed in exasperation; she couldn't believe he could make light of this, too. But dammit, he was right. She did want to. He was so close now. She vacillated for a moment, not sure if it was wise to give in so easily.

To hell with it. She stood up on tiptoe and tentatively pressed her lips to his, laying her hand against his chest for balance.

It was a nice kiss. Surprisingly sweet. Tender. When she pulled away, Jane stood there for a moment with his eyes closed and a goofy half-smile on his face.

He opened his eyes and smiled dazzlingly at her. "You're really good at that," he announced, and reached for her again.

She placed a hand against his chest to stay his progress. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Kissing you back," he said, as though this was obvious. He picked up the hand she had placed against his chest and kissed it, and then moved in for another kiss.

"Oh, no you don't," she said, evading his grasp. "No more kisses for you."

He stopped and stared at her, crestfallen. "What?"

"I don't want you to think I'm rewarding your terrible behavior. You get one freebie, Jane. That's it. If you want any kisses in the future, you're going to have to earn them."

"Earn them, huh?"

"That's right."

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "What do I have to do to earn one right now?"

She took his hand and drew him towards the bed. "I'm tired, and I don't feel like driving home. You're going to have to let me sleep in your bed," she told him, toeing off her shoes and sliding under the covers.

He crawled in beside her and claimed his prize. "You drive a hard bargain, Lisbon," he said against her lips. "What else?"

"You have to stay in the bed with me all night," she decided. "No getting out of bed unless I give you special permission."

He nuzzled her neck. "You're an absolute slave driver."

"We're sleeping in tomorrow," she continued, tilting her head to the side to give him better access. "No getting up early."

He kissed her softly. "Done."

She kissed him back, their tongues tangling lazily together. "You're going to have to buy me breakfast tomorrow, too. A big one."

"You shall have the finest waffles and eggs in the land," he promised her.

She laid her hand on his cheek and leaned up to meet his mouth with hers. "And strawberries. I want strawberries."

He kissed her again, long and languid. "What happens if I steal a kiss that I haven't earned yet?"

She kissed him back. "Then you will be running a kiss deficit, my friend. You'll have to work extra hard to get back in the black."

"I assume I'm pretty deep in the red already," he said, sliding his hand around her hip to pull her closer. "For past offenses."

"Mm," she agreed. "The list of your offenses is long, Jane. You have a lot of making up to do."

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I know. I will make it up to you, Teresa. All of it. Just give me time."

Later, she fell asleep with her lips resting against his throat and her hand fisted in the front of his shirt.

He pried her fingers loose and interlaced them with his own, drawing their joined hands to his chest and holding them to his heart.

She slept. He stayed.


End file.
